Page 6 - WHY CELEBRATE EASTER - GN 03-1982 2

Easter was a pagan festival long before Christianity and the New Testament Church ever existed. It anciently commemorated the Friday death and supposed Sunday resurrection of Nimrod, the false pagan savior.
In the great apostasy that swept through the new Testament world in the latter part of the first century, this pagan Good Friday-Easter Sunday tradition was falsely applied to the death and resurrection of the true Savior, Jesus Christ. It was made to appear Christian.
This teaching became especially popular in the area around Rome. But in Asia Minor, where the apostle Paul had established churches, the New Testament Passover continued to be observed on Nisan 14.
The Britannica article “Easter” states: “Generally speaking, the Western Churches [Catholic] kept Easter on the first day of the week, while the Eastern Churches [containing most of those who remained as part of the TRUE Christian Church] followed the Jewish rule [observing Passover on 14 Nisan, the fist month of the sacred Hebrew calendar].”
This difference soon led to a serious controversy. Gradually, the Greek and Asian churches began to succumb to the pagan tradition.
This same article in Britannica states: “Polycarp, the disciple of John the Evangelist, and bishop of Smyrna, visited Rome in 159 to confer with Anicetus, the bishop of that See, on the subject, and urged the tradition which he had received from the apostle of observing the 14th day. Anicetus, however, declined.”
The story doesn’t end here! “About forty years later [A.D. 197] the question was discussed in a very different spirit between Victor, bishop of Rome, and Polycrates, metropolitan of proconsular Asia [the territory of the churches established by the apostle Paul]. That province was the only portion of Christendom which still adhered to the Jewish [the writer should have said ‘true Christian”] usage.
“Victor demanded that all should adopt the usage prevailing at Rome. This Polycrates firmly refused to agree to, and urged many weighty reasons to the contrary, whereupon Victor proceeded to excommunicate Polycrates and the Christians who continued the Easter usage [that is, GOD’S way].
“He was however, restrained [by other bishops] from actually proceeding to enforce the decree of excommunication ... and the Asiatic Churches retained their usage unmolested. We find the Jewish [the true Christian] usage from time to time reasserting itself after this, but it never prevailed to any large extent.”
It did, however, crop up from time to time as an irksome and annoying issue that caused disunity in the professing Christian Church. When the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine convoked the
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